“What is going on?” Arkhan asked under his breath as he watched the extragalactic invaders seemingly evacuate all the territory that they had, up till this point, been feasting on. Of course, Arkhan wasn’t actually there in person, and was instead watching the situation unfold through the glowing photoreceptors of his creations. He could not believe the turn of events he was witnessing; the seemingly insatiable and unflinching invaders who had up till this point fought with ferocity and an utter lack of cowardice were now suddenly fleeing from his ships, his territory and apparently even the galaxy itself.

Were they finally giving up, or was there some other factor at play here? Perhaps they were gathering their strength for one last major push, assembling as much of itself as possible in order to overwhelm his wife and her fleets all at once? No, the invaders had never acted that smart before, instead using Zhukovian tactics to simply drown any opposition in a living tide of bodies. While Arcadia had since its founding been a master of the hybrid mix of ‘Shock and Awe’ and mass assault doctrines, the invaders had opted for pure Mass Assault and had, for a time, been on the offensive. Now, though, Arcadia had apparently won the war and was removing any trace of the invaders from its space.

When systems were retaken following the retreat of the invaders, it was gut-wrenchingly horrifying to see how little was left there. Every planet, moon, asteroid and even some small stars had been completely devoured, with the sole celestial bodies left remaining being the stars that were simply too big for the swarming monstrosities to devour before being pushed out. Even still, these orphan stars were much smaller than before, with giants turned into mediums and mediums turned into dwarfs (the type of star, not the race, although it would have been funny to see stars transformed into stocky, short and hardy people).

As the invaders retreated, it eventually became clear that they were not, in fact, headed towards the edge of the galaxy. No, they were going somewhere else entirely. After enough systems had been cleared, it became obvious that the biological nightmare fuel that was the invaders had been gathering in a single star system. Said system was unremarkable before the invasion, and after all this time had passed since the invasion began it was expected that even the system’s star would have been consumed. Why, then, were the biological beasties retreating to this one place rather than going anywhere else?

Arkhan and the general staff decided that the best way to make sure that the invaders were stamped out was to first purge every remaining trace of them from the formerly occupied territories and only after that had been done would they move on what seemed to be the fallback point for the monsters. It would be risky, but if they could wipe out every other holdout in short order and then strike the massed horrors from multiple directions with the full force of the Arcadian Galactic Commonwealth, there was a good chance that if everything went according to plan that they could snuff out the menace from beyond the galaxy in a single decisive battle.

If only they knew that by delaying their strike, they would be consigning trillions to a fate that could potentially be called ‘worse than death’.

…

After more than two weeks’ worth of preparations, the time had come to wipe out the last holdout of the amorphous and predatory entities from outside the galaxy. Arkhan, as one might expect, actually wanted in on the battle, intending to bring his personal flagship into the mix, along with a large fleet to back him up. However, the idea was shot down immediately due to several factors.

In no particular order, the factors were as follows;

Firstly, Arkhan was the undisputed ruler of Arcadia, so if something were to happen to him it would be a blow that his nation would likely be unable to come back from.

Second, there were only two Adeptus Deorum-class flagships in existence, with Arcadia (and Arkhan) having no intentions to make another one. Therefore, if things went poorly and Asharia’s private flagship was destroyed, the only other ship capable of matching it would need to be safe.

Third, no one knew what lay in the last remaining system that had been occupied by the invaders, so risking all of Arcadia’s most powerful and least replaceable assets on what could be a deathtrap was beyond unwise.

Lastly, it had been confirmed that the invaders could assimilate living people and animals, turning them and their abilities against Arcadia. If the invaders got ahold of Arkhan and assimilated him, then Arcadia and the entire galaxy was royally fucked. A swarming mass of Lovecraftian meat and chitin was bad enough, but throw the masses of Mobile Suit Golems and Mobile Armor Golems into the mix and you had a recipe for an inescapable and unstoppable apocalypse.

So, while the taskforce that had been assembled to deal with the invaders began to wind up their hyperdrives or activate the hyperdrive slaver function on their ships, Arkhan sat back in his office and watched with a mix of excitement and anxiety bubbling inside him.

He would have to live out the battle vicariously, or at least he thought so. Turns out that not all of the invaders had fled to the system that was about to be retaken by Arcadia’s fleet. Seemingly from out of nowhere, a splinter fleet of extragalactic organic warships dropped out of Hyperspace on the edge of the Solaris system. While the massed fleet of Arcadian ships in said system had indeed been gathered there for such a potential eventuality, it still caught everyone off guard.

There was no time for the other fleets to be called back to defend the capital system of the Arcadian Galactic Commonwealth; Arkhan would have to hold the line for as long as possible until reinforcements arrived. While this incursion was filled with the same monsters as all the others had been, these ones behaved very differently. They did not stop to snack on planets, moons, asteroids or anything else. Instead they merely charged ahead, seemingly intent of taking down Arkhan and the capital of his nation.

As Arkhan suited up in his custom power-armor, a device that had been completely upgraded since the last time he had used it in anger but still something he had used in exercises a great many times since, he wondered why the invaders had changed their M/O so suddenly. But he didn’t have time to ponder the reasoning for long, for the enemy was at his door and they needed a good ass-kicking to make sure that they could not harm anyone ever again. Despite pleas from his subordinates, Arkhan prepared to enter combat personally.

After all, to reverse the quote of a certain Mormon who had been cooked nearly to ‘well done’; “You can’t expect the servants of a God to do all the work.”